Just as with English, they’re still there.

They’re not actually dropped 100% of the time; it’s just standard practice to keep things consistent. Or maybe it’s because in Japanese, there’s no kana equivalent to denote the dropping of a vowel sound. So yes, you’d write “desu” and “deshita”, whatever the reason is behind it.

Also, once you get more experience of the language, you’ll stop thinking in terms of romaji altogether; you’ll be so used to kana that seeing romaji will be weird. Romaji is really for foreigners and beginners – in Japan and in Japanese books and tv shows and websites and films, it’ll be pretty rare to see romaji used, unless they’re going for some stylistic effect, I’m not sure. Maybe on signs for tourists, I guess?

To be fair, romaji is used for typing in Japanese, but in my brain at least there’s quite a disconnect between what keys I’m typing and what’s on the screen. As an example, to type 食卓, I need to type on the keyboard “shokutaku” but it *feels* like I’m typing しょくたく, so when I actually see the romaji on the screen, it just feels… weird – like I said before – because I’m really not used to seeing romaji.

@Tsetycoon13: I’m not sure I follow…